The classic crossover started itself off as a good way to make the best of what you've got — so if you have two shows on your roster, it's a no-brainer to have the shows and characters cross over every once in a while, especially if one of the shows is less popular than its sibling.

The popular way of doing this is the "true" crossover, in which a storyline will begin in one series and cross over into the next one, encouraging viewers to tune into a show that may be thematically similar but which they do not usually watch.

Alternatively, a single popular character can cross over from one show into the other, for a brief guest appearance; this has the effect of attracting that character's fans from the other show without requiring the writing teams to sync up or creating DVD- and arc-unfriendly episodes. This is very common in comic books, in which most characters are part of a larger universe, such as the Marvel Universe or The DCU. It happens less often in TV and movie properties based on comic books, since they are often made by different production companies.

As more ways of developing connections between shows formed, we ended up with lots of different subtropes of crossover. All of these can be seen on the Crossover Index and any examples for those will be found on their own pages.

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